What Is Philosophy? (Column 155)
A distinction between description and normativity opens the question of philosophy’s status
The essay begins from the previous discussion of aesthetic-human values and their distinction from social-moral values. The rabbi stresses that when we say a value is binding, we are not describing a psychological fact about how people feel, but making a normative claim about what ought to be. This becomes the point of departure for the broader question: if such claims are neither empirical science nor descriptive psychology, what domain do they belong to, and what gives them validity?
Why philosophy cannot be identified with science, psychology, or mere conceptual analysis
The essay examines several simple options and rejects them. Philosophy is not just another scientific discipline, because it does not rest on empirical observation; but if it does make claims about reality, it is not initially clear where those claims come from. If it is merely inward observation of how we think, then it belongs to psychology. If it is only clarification of concepts, then much of philosophical debate loses its point: one could just define different terms and part as friends. So conceptual clarification is a necessary precondition for proper philosophy, but it does not exhaust philosophy. Philosophy does make substantive claims, such as the claim that there is a category of binding values between the ethical and the aesthetic.
This vagueness explains both continental junk and analytic emptiness
From here comes the methodological critique: because it is not always clear what counts as a substantive philosophical claim, it is very easy to slip into word games masquerading as depth. The rabbi argues that large parts of continental philosophy, especially postmodern philosophy, are full of nonsense sustained by conceptual vagueness. On the other hand, Anglo-American philosophy sometimes shows the opposite tendency: great analytic precision, but avoidance of substantive claims, to the point of emptiness. The conclusion is not to choose one side, but to see that good philosophy requires both conceptual clarity and real content.
Mathematics sharpens the difference between a formal language and a claim about reality
To sharpen the problem, the essay turns to mathematics. At first glance, mathematics looks like a formal language: we define concepts, posit axioms, and derive conclusions. In that sense it does not directly make claims about the world, and so it contains no substantive disagreements, only checks of whether a proof is valid. The examples from geometry and from the physics of adding forces show that whether a given mathematical structure fits reality is an empirical question, not a mathematical one. This highlights again that philosophy differs from mathematics as it is understood in this simple picture, because philosophy does seek to say something about reality.
Metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics concern reality but are inaccessible to the senses
An “empirical” look at what has traditionally counted as philosophy — metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics — reveals what they share: they are not accessible to scientific instruments. Metaphysics cannot be observed through a microscope, and ethics and aesthetics are not merely technically inaccessible but seem not even to present a physical object one could observe. From this came two familiar reactions: logical positivism, which treats such claims as meaningless pseudo-sentences, and relativism, which is willing at most to treat them as subjective descriptions of feelings or conventions. The rabbi rejects both: these claims do have meaning, and the real question is not whether they are meaningful but how their truth can be known.
The problematic basic assumption is crude empiricism: as if only the senses can know
According to the essay, the source of the confusion is a hidden assumption that every piece of knowledge about reality must come through the senses. That is an empiricist assumption that is too strong. The rabbi argues that human beings possess another cognitive capacity, a non-sensory one, which Maimonides called the “eyes of the intellect” and Husserl described as “seeing ideas.” If one rules out such a possibility from the outset, then everything non-empirical will automatically look like speculation or subjectivity. But that assumption itself is what needs criticism, not the philosophical conclusions that follow from rejecting it.
Intuition is not merely a shortcut in thinking but a non-sensory cognitive faculty
Here the essay presents its central move: intuition is not just fast thinking, unconscious processing, or a stockpile of past experience, but a kind of cognition. When speaking of the “eyes of the intellect,” the point is that the intellect does not only analyze; it also sees. We can become aware that something is true not through the senses, but also not as mere inner speculation. This is meant to explain how one can arrive at truths about reality by non-sensory means, and what gives philosophy — and even parts of science — their basis.
Without intuition one cannot justify even the laws of nature
This argument is not limited to ethics or metaphysics. The rabbi connects it to Kant’s problem of the synthetic a priori: how can we move from particular observations to a general law of nature and trust that it describes reality? If generalization is only an operation of our mind, there is no reason to assume it fits the world. So even science requires an element of non-sensory “seeing”: we see the general law through the facts. In that sense, intuition is a condition for the validity of science itself, not only of domains outside science.
The same intuition is supposed to ground morality, beauty, and metaphysics as well
From here the essay expands further: if we have eidetic vision, it can also explain the classical domains of philosophy. When we say that murder is forbidden, the claim is that we have “observed” a moral truth; when we say that a work has aesthetic value, the judgment comes from comparison to the idea of art or beauty; and when we speak of God, the soul, causality, or stable laws, we are apprehending non-sensory dimensions of reality. The difference from science is not in cognition itself but in the form of control: in science one can test empirically, whereas in philosophy one can mainly test internal coherence and fit with other intuitions.
Therefore philosophy is defined as non-sensory observation of reality, not as psychology or speculation
On that basis comes the proposed definition: science is the processing of sensory observations of reality, and philosophy is the processing of non-sensory observations of reality. This is not inward turning in the psychological sense, nor arbitrary invention of concepts, but gathering findings through intuition and then analyzing, distinguishing, and generalizing them. This also explains why philosophy seems close to conceptual clarification: because it works with inner and subtle contents that are easy to confuse with semantic play. But conceptual clarification is only one part of the task, not its essence.
Philosophy is not identical with intuition; it is the reflective processing of intuitive raw material
The rabbi emphasizes that not every intuitive judgment is already philosophy, just as not every isolated observation is science. Intuitions are the raw material; philosophy arises only when one analyzes them, places alternatives side by side, makes distinctions, examines implications, and builds from them a general picture. So one must not identify a fleeting subjective impression with a philosophical argument. Precisely the demand for systematic processing is what distinguishes philosophical inquiry from uncontrolled intuition.
If one adopts mathematical Platonism, mathematics becomes formal philosophy
At the end, the essay returns to mathematics and suggests a more complex possibility: if one accepts a Platonist view, mathematics is not merely a language we invented but a discovery of objective ideal structures. In that case, mathematics too rests on a kind of observation of ideas, and can be seen as part of philosophy — its formal, precise, and symbolizable part. Still, the rabbi rejects the demand to identify valid philosophy only with what can be formalized: philosophy also contains genuine contents that cannot be fully formalized without smuggling in decisive assumptions.
The methodological conclusion: combine intuition with rigorous analysis
The practical conclusion of the essay is twofold. On the one hand, there is no reason to dismiss philosophy as necessarily subjective or empty, because it has a genuine cognitive source in intuition. On the other hand, precisely because it lacks direct empirical testing, one must practice it with great caution: define concepts, formulate claims, identify alternatives and implications, and test coherence. Only the combination of courage to make claims with analytic discipline can save philosophy from the two failures the essay diagnoses — vague speculation on one side and conceptual emptiness on the other.
With God’s help
Dedicated to my dear daughter Rivka, on completing her first year in Netur
In the previous column I presented the concept of aesthetic-human values, and contrasted them with moral values in the social sense (values that benefit others). I argued that this distinction lies between the aesthetic and the ethical, and that there are binding values there and not merely subjective feelings. At first glance, this distinction appears to belong to the philosophical realm, since it is not empirical. This is not psychology, because it is not a description of facts but a normative claim. I am not making a descriptive claim—that this is how we relate to these values (regarding them as valid)—but a normative one—that this is how we ought to do so.
If this were a description, there would not be much room for argument. People who claim otherwise simply relate differently, and that is that. If there is an argument, that means we are dealing with an objective claim that is supposed to bind all of us (according to whoever accepts it). The same is true of ordinary moral values (in the social sense). Some see them as descriptive claims about our patterns of thought, and not as claims with objective validity. On their view, the prohibition against murder is nothing more than a descriptive claim that people feel a certain kind of aversion (called a “prohibition”) to murder. But then, of course, this is a branch of psychology, and the claim becomes trivial (because it is obviously true). According to this view, one who does murder is simply different (constituted differently from most of us). By contrast, in the moral conception, the prohibition against murder is not a descriptive claim but a normative one, and hence someone who murders is in the wrong. Ethics deals not with what is (in the world or in us) but with what ought to be.
All this reawakened in me the need to address the question of what philosophy is, and where it stands in relation to empirical science, psychology, mathematics, or mere intellectual speculations and imaginary thought experiments. In one of the coming columns I will also get to The Cat That Is Not There, Ron Aharoni’s book (yes yes, Yishai, I have not forgotten), which deals precisely with these points and offers a surprising and challenging answer to them.
First reflections
So what is philosophy, after all? First, we must locate it. We know that science is divided into different fields, such as physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology, etc. (for the sake of simplicity I am ignoring what are called the humanities). Does philosophy parallel one of those branches of science, or science as such? It seems to me unlikely that it should be seen as a scientific branch (as I will explain below), and therefore it is probably parallel to a level above that. In fact, philosophy stands at the same hierarchical level as science (and not as a particular scientific field). And of course, just as science is divided into different fields, so too philosophy (metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, logic, epistemology, and more). Of course, the claim that philosophy and science belong to the same hierarchical level says nothing about the difference between them or the definition of each.
Science, in its simple definition, is a collection of insights about the world accumulated by means of empirical observations (and of course also generalizations from those observations). In this rough description, one may say that the various scientific fields differ from one another in content, but not in their basic method. Philosophy does not belong to science at all, since it is not an empirical field. But does it make claims about the world?
At first glance, it seems to be a collection of pure intellectual speculations, that is, insights that do not claim anything about the world. Why? Because if these are claims about the world, then there are two possible sources for them: if they are based on observations—then how are they different from science?! That is simply drawing conclusions from observation. And if they are drawn from my own thought without connection to observation—what justification is there for accepting them as claims about the world? Seemingly this is mere speculation. The fact that we think in a certain way does not oblige the world to behave accordingly. As Mark Twain, of blessed memory, said, the world owes you nothing; it was here before you.
One might perhaps suggest that philosophy is an inner observation of ourselves. It is the study of our modes of thought. But if that is the case, then it is really a branch of psychology, and again the previous question returns: if it is based on observations—then it is science and not philosophy, and if not—then once again we are back in the provinces of speculation. It is important to understand that we too, as subjects, can be regarded as objects of scientific observation. The neurosciences investigate our modes of thought, and so do branches of psychology (including cognitive errors, as in the work of Tversky and Kahneman)[1]. Moreover, we saw above that ethics deals with what ought to be and not with what is (in us or in the world). What is that based on? Is there any validity at all to arguments and claims of this type?
If we return to the example of aesthetic values discussed in the previous column, the question is what the meaning and validity of the assertion that there are binding aesthetic values is. If this is a claim about the way we think, then it is descriptive psychology. As I already noted, in that situation there is not much point in arguing about it. If someone declares that he does not feel that way, then he does not. This is of course not a factual claim about the world outside us. Therefore, this claim must be understood differently: these are binding values, meaning that not only is this how we feel, but this is how one ought to act. But then, seemingly, this is intellectual speculation. It appears that we are simply inventing a new conceptual sphere, claims that are norms rather than facts, and amusing ourselves about its contents. So what is there to argue about here? Is all this simply one great misunderstanding?
Some define philosophy as the clarification of our concepts. But if that is indeed so, then the arguments lose all significance. If there is a dispute about the meaning of some concept, let the parties kindly define two different terms in the language for the two concepts and part as friends. What on earth is the heated argument about? It is true that in many cases philosophical discussion is vague and sometimes devoid of sense and meaning because conceptual clarification was not carried out properly. Therefore, it is fitting to precede philosophical discussion with a clarification of the concepts, before entering into claims, arguments, and polemics. But it is not correct to identify conceptual clarification with philosophical discussion. Conceptual clarification is a prerequisite for a proper and worthwhile philosophical discussion.
Beyond that, as a matter of fact there are many topics that do not deal only with clarification of concepts and yet are considered philosophical. There are philosophical claims and philosophical doctrines that make different claims in different areas. The example of aesthetic values with which I opened is likewise not only a conceptual clarification, but a claim about the existence of a category located in the space between the ethical and the aesthetic. I argued that there are binding values there, that they are context- and circumstance-dependent, and many more such claims that are not mere definitions. Therefore, it is not reasonable to see philosophy as a field that mainly deals with conceptual clarification (below I will explain why there is nonetheless a sense that this is philosophy’s main concern).
The garbage crowding philosophy’s shelves
Before continuing, I will note that, to the best of my understanding, this vagueness underlies the heaps of intellectual garbage with which philosophy is filled. So much nonsense has been written there, and so many pages are crammed with meaningless and futile wordplay, made possible mainly because of this vagueness. People feel that this is wordplay, and therefore anyone who plays with words is regarded, in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, as a philosopher. There are entire areas in philosophy that grind words and say nothing. Some of it is merely psychology (sometimes cheap psychology), and another part is wordplay. In my opinion, most continental philosophy of the last century (especially in the postmodern era) is like this. This garbage gives philosophy as a whole a bad name and reinforces the impression that it is a pointless game.
Of course, it is not always easy to distinguish when this is your misunderstanding as a reader and when it is genuine nonsense.[2] I suggest that when you read such a text, you try to define the concepts and formulate the claims in an orderly way, build the argument, and identify the conclusion. Then try to think about the alternative, that is, what the conclusion adds for you (its implications) as compared to other possibilities. In many cases, you will discover that although at first glance it appears very profound, in fact it is mere wordplay.[3] Tried and tested.
To complete the picture, it should be noted that on the other side of the barricade, Anglo-American philosophy, which is more analytic in character, has its own kind of emptiness, though an opposite kind. Out of excessive insistence on precision and conceptual definition, it sometimes remains on the plane of empty definitions and focuses on conceptual distinctions without allowing itself to make claims. But there, at least, conceptual and intellectual clarification is carried out properly, and therefore these are generally things of real value.
What is mathematics?
Mathematics also stands in the background of these matters. There the issue seems clearer, since on its face mathematics really does seem to be merely an intellectual pastime. We define concepts, posit assumptions (axioms) about them, and see what can be derived from those assumptions and definitions. A fertile area in mathematics is a collection of definitions and assumptions that can generate many nontrivial theorems (that is, interesting claims that can be proved from those assumptions). This has nothing to do with empirical science. The fact that these intellectual amusements are useful in various sciences is fascinating, but does not necessarily say anything about mathematics.
The meaning of this is that mathematics is a kind of language. It is a language we have developed, within whose framework it is easier to deal with fields like physics or chemistry and easier to be precise and avoid mistakes in thought. But the language as such is nothing more than a conceptual construction, and therefore there is no true and false with respect to it, nor is it really relevant to argue within it. In mathematics there are no disputes. What is proved is proved, and what is not is not. If there is an error in a proof, everyone should acknowledge that there is in fact no proof here. That is simply a mistaken impression we have left behind, not a dispute. Everyone can of course choose axioms other than the ones I chose and prove other theorems on their basis, but that is not an argument.
On the simple view, mathematics also does not really claim anything about the world.[4] If we take geometry, it indeed proves that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180, but this is not a claim about the world. It is a mathematical claim about a system of axioms called Euclidean plane geometry. If one adopts its assumptions, one can prove the theorem that in every triangle the sum of the angles is 180. The question whether this holds in our physical world is a question in physics. If the Euclidean axioms do in fact hold in the world, then one may infer that the sum of the angles in all triangles here is also 180. But this is a claim from the realm of empirical science (which must examine whether the assumptions in fact hold). Even if it turns out that those assumptions are not true in our world (as general relativity indeed shows), geometry remains standing in its place. It remains a perfect mathematical theory; it simply cannot be applied to our reality (in mathematical terminology: our reality is not a model of Euclidean geometry).
This is easy to see in logic. Logic deals with relations between propositions and with inferences. But in its purity it is an entirely formal domain, that is, it deals with relations between pure forms. The question of what the content of those forms is does not matter to the logician, and the validity of formal logic does not depend on it. Logic says that if every X is Y and a is X, then necessarily a is Y. This argument is valid regardless of what we substitute for X, Y, and a. It becomes a statement about our world if we substitute for X, Y, and a concepts that indeed bear those relations to one another. For example, X—a human being, Y—an animal, a—Socrates.
The same is true of algebra and arithmetic. For example, take the proposition 3+3=6. Let us now try to apply it to physical reality. For example, let us take a body and apply to it a force of magnitude 3 northward and another force of magnitude 3 westward. Seemingly, the total (resultant) force acting on the body is 6, since that is the arithmetic result. But anyone who has studied mechanics knows that this is not correct. The resultant force acting on the body is √18 (toward the northwest). Have we refuted the arithmetic claim 3+3=6 here? Certainly not. What we have refuted is the claim in physics that the addition of forces is described by arithmetic addition. Arithmetic remains where it was, as true as ever. It claims nothing about reality and is not tested by reality.
Is philosophy a branch of mathematics, or related to it in some way? My feeling is that there is a connection between them, but I will get to that later. For now, the answer seems negative. Mathematics is a language that claims nothing about the world, whereas philosophy, as we saw above, definitely does.
An empirical look
In order to move toward a definition of philosophy, let us take the scientific-empirical route, that is, let us look at what is traditionally assigned to philosophy and try to characterize it. The central areas of traditional philosophy are metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. In addition to these three areas, there are also logic and epistemology, which deal more with us, and mainly with the question of how we know the world and analyze it. Therefore, for the time being I will focus on the first three areas.
What these three areas have in common is that they are not accessible to the observational tools of empirical science. One cannot discover metaphysics with a microscope, an ammeter, or a particle accelerator. Ethics and aesthetics certainly are not accessible to scientific instruments and observation (if one understands that ethics and aesthetics are not descriptive fields, that is, that they deal not with what is but with what ought to be, as I explained above). So how can one make claims in these areas?
Many indeed infer from this that the claims in these three areas are either meaningless (pseudo-sentences, in the language of Carnap and logical positivism) or descriptions of something subjective and lacking validity. The logical positivists treated metaphysics as a collection of claims that do not claim anything. Meaningless word games that say nothing. The motivation for this strange and untenable approach is the difficulty I have described here. Because we have no empirical way to approach the clarification of these claims, and because of the assumption (characteristic of logical positivism) that confirmation and truth are almost synonymous terms, the conclusion is that these sentences have no meaning. But the truth is that they do have meaning; there is simply no way to confirm them (at least not empirically. See below). There is meaning to the claim that there is God, or that there are demons and angels and souls, etc. The question of how one can know that is a good one, but it is a different question. Metaphysics deals with objects in the world, except that they are not accessible to the tools of observation. One can of course argue that these objects do not really exist (because we have no empirical indication of them), but it is not plausible to argue that these are meaningless claims.
But with respect to ethics and aesthetics, the situation is even more severe. There, it would seem, there is nothing at all to observe. This is not a technical problem of lacking suitable measuring instruments, as in metaphysics (instruments that could observe God, or souls, or demons), but a problem with the observed objects themselves. What exactly are we supposed to observe in order to determine that murder is forbidden, or that some picture is beautiful? The naturalistic fallacy states that there is no fact whose knowledge yields those normative determinations. It is therefore no wonder that the ranks broaden here. With respect to ethics and aesthetics, the relativists (who advocate relativism) join the positivists as well. In their view, these are descriptive rather than normative claims (they do not recognize the existence of the normative category at all). It is not entirely clear whether in their opinion these claims are meaningless, but they certainly lack validity. If the claims are interpreted as asserting something valid about the world, then they seem to them necessarily meaningless (because in their view there is no such thing as norms. It is a kind of illusory feeling that has no real validity). Of course, if these are descriptions (of our ways of thinking and relating), then even a positivist can accept them.
The underlying assumption
Readers who are familiar with me already know where this is going. There is some assumption at the root of the perplexity I have described, namely that anything not accumulated by observational-scientific means is not information about the world but a thought game or a subjective matter. The assumption is that one cannot make claims about the world without sensory observation—in other words, blunt empiricism.
In several of my books I argue that this assumption is mistaken (in Two Carts and the rest of the quartet, and especially see Truth, Yet Unstable from chapter 14 onward). My claim is that we have the ability to arrive at certain truths about the world without observation and sensory cognition. In Maimonides’ language at the beginning of Guide of the Perplexed, we have the ability to observe the world with the eyes of the intellect (“the eyes of the intellect,” that is, without the senses), or in Husserl’s terminology, to contemplate ideas (= eidetic seeing, which of course is not done through the eyes). Before I explain how this bears on the definition of philosophy, I need to clarify these points further.
Intuition as cognitive thought
Maimonides’ term the eyes of the intellect juxtaposes two concepts drawn from different worlds: the intellect belongs to thought and the eyes to cognition (observation). What does the expression the eyes of the intellect mean? Maimonides means to say that our intellect does not deal only in thought, but also has a cognitive component. We have a kind of faculty that may be called “cognitive thought.” We directly apprehend that something is true without sensory observation, but this is still not pure thought (because pure thought takes place wholly within us, and therefore there is no reason to assume that its conclusions correspond to what is happening in the world itself), but rather another kind of cognition: non-sensory cognition. This is also what Husserl called “seeing ideas.” We contemplate ideas, but this is a kind of contemplation (non-sensory), not pure thought.
In my book there I explained that this is the only possible answer to Kant’s riddle of the synthetic a priori. Kant also wondered, with respect to science, how one can trust the laws of nature when they are obtained by generalization on the basis of observations. After all, the observations we have seen are a collection of specific facts. The general law we arrived at is the product of a generalization made with our own tools of thought. What guarantees that our thought accurately captures what is happening in the world? Why assume that the law of nature is true? I explained there that throughout the history of philosophy, no good answer was given to this fundamental question (see the survey in Hugo Bergmann’s book, Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, chapter 9). The only way to ground the validity of the laws of nature is the synthetic assumption, which accepts the existence of a faculty in our intellect that performs cognitive thought. We simply “see” (with the eyes of the intellect) the general theory through the specific facts. This is not thought but cognition.
I argued there that this is what we usually call intuition. Intuition is a tool that enables us to reach conclusions directly, in a leap of thought, without going through orderly and systematic procedures of thinking. To see some solution to a problem without doing the calculation, or to receive inspiration for how best to approach the solution of a scientific or other problem. People tend to think that intuition is a tool of thought, since it is not based on sensory observation. But precisely because of that, there is a tendency to see it as something subjective and not as a valid tool for knowing the world. Others argue that intuition is nothing more than the totality of insights we accumulated in the past by observational means, except that we use them without having to resort to them directly. They have already been assimilated within us and serve us as part of our “thinking” (when in fact this is not really thought but the result of observation). I argued here that intuition also contains a component that knows the world in the present by non-sensory means.
Intuition regarding concepts and principles
But what do we contemplate by means of the eyes of the intellect? Why not just look at it with our eyes? First, this is how we contemplate the laws of nature. As noted, we see the generalization through the particular facts (the law of gravitation through specific phenomena of objects falling to the earth, or the paths of stars, tides, and the like). But beyond that, I argue there that this human faculty is what enables us to speak about metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. We contemplate the non-material dimensions of reality, those not accessible to our senses, and therefore we use the cognitive tools of the intellect.
According to this proposal, when we say that murder is forbidden, what we mean is that we have contemplated the idea of the good or of values, and “seen” that murder is forbidden.[5] This is the result of observation, even if not sensory observation. The same is true when we say that some work of art is impressive, important, or of high aesthetic or artistic value: we mean that we compared it to the idea of art (beauty?), and the result is that this work has high artistic value. And so too regarding metaphysics: we observe reality and see that there is a principle of causality, that there are fixed laws, that there is God, that we have a soul, and the like.
If so, the collection of tools called intuition is needed in the scientific realm as well (because without it our generalizations, that is, the laws of nature, have no validity), but it is the basis for the validity of metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic claims. There is indeed a difference between scientific generalizations and metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. In the scientific realm, we can subject our conclusion to an empirical test (a test of falsification), whereas in the other areas we cannot. There, at most, one can examine the internal coherence of our ideas and intuitions, that is, test a conclusion against other intuitions we have. Even so, if we place trust in intuition, then even if its conclusions cannot be checked empirically, that does not mean they should be rejected out of hand. At most, one should be cautious and try to test them again and again (against additional intuitions).
It is important to understand that the alternative is that everything is relative or meaningless. Whoever does not accept the claim that intuition is a cognitive tool will not be able to acknowledge the validity of all these types of claims (the laws of nature, ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics). There is no middle option. Therefore each of us must decide where he stands. In my book there (and elsewhere, such as here) I also brought empirical-statistical evidence for the power of intuition as a cognitive tool, and in effect for the validity of its conclusions. But even without resorting to that, everyone should understand that if he acknowledges the validity of the laws of nature and of moral norms, he is in fact implicitly assuming the conception described here. We shall now see that the definition of philosophy as well, which is our subject here, depends on this question.
So what is philosophy?
My proposal is that science deals with insights derived from sensory observations of reality, while philosophy is made up of insights derived from non-sensory observations of reality. Science deals with clarifying the physical reality accessible to the senses, and therefore its main working tool is scientific observation through the senses and measuring instruments. In addition, there are of course analysis and generalization, which are the subjective-thinking part of the scientific process (which also makes use of intuition), but as noted, the scientific conclusions we arrive at can be subjected to empirical test. Philosophy, by contrast, deals with parts of reality that are not accessible to the senses (such as metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics). Therefore, of necessity, it requires intuition. One may say that philosophy is the gathering of findings by means of non-sensory observations of reality (and of ourselves as well, of course). When I contemplate the idea of morality and see that murder is forbidden, I have gathered here a non-scientific finding (in the field of ethics) by means of intuition (with the eyes of the intellect). Part of philosophy deals with clarifying these very observational tools themselves (logic and epistemology), both observation of facts and of ideas. Analysis of intuition itself, and the very distinction that we possess such a faculty (and the claim that it is valid, and not merely a subjective illusion), also belong, of course, to the realm of philosophy.
This is probably the reason for the widespread feeling that philosophy’s main concern is conceptual clarification. We are indeed refining our inner insights, but this is not really mere conceptual clarification. Rather, it is the gathering of findings by means of intuition and observation of ourselves in order to understand their meaning and distinguish among similar things. Because the senses are not involved, people think this is introspection and mere analysis of concepts, but it is not. It is non-sensory observation of the world.
Therefore it is also very easy to become confused and arrive at gloomy conclusions regarding the futility and subjectivity of this field, and this is aided in particular by all the producers of intellectual garbage mentioned above. But if one adopts the synthetic picture presented here, it follows that there is no need or justification whatsoever to disdain our insights and the belief that philosophy has value and is not merely spinning its wheels. The worthless texts that crowd philosophy not only contribute to this error, but are themselves based on it.
The conclusion is that recognizing intuition as a cognitive tool is not only a condition for the validity of the laws of science, ethics, and aesthetics, but is also a condition for defining the field of philosophy. As we have seen here, without assuming this there is no reasonable definition of the concept of philosophy and of philosophical inquiry, and we are left with scientific claims or meaningless thought games.
And one more technical remark. Philosophy is not synonymous with intuition. Clearly, an intuitive determination as such does not deserve the name philosophy, just as a specific scientific observation is not science. Science is the analysis and generalization of specific observations, something that adds to the concrete observation itself and arrives at a general insight (a law of nature). Observations are the raw material of science. The same is true of philosophical inquiry. Intuitive insights are the raw material of philosophy. But only inquiry that deepens them and adds analysis, comparisons, distinctions, and depths of meaning to those insights, and turns them into a general theory, deserves the name philosophy. Without that processing and analysis, this is not philosophy in the full sense, since there must be some degree of complexity for us to regard a given text or discussion as theoretical inquiry.
Back to mathematics
Above I mentioned that in my opinion there is a connection between mathematics and philosophy, and I promised to explain it. To do so, I will preface the discussion with the dilemma of Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics. Contrary to the conception described above, according to which mathematics does not make claims about the world but builds intellectual constructions (languages), some argue that mathematics does describe the world. But this is not necessarily our world, but rather certain Platonic worlds. Even if our world is not Euclidean, there is a Platonic idea of a Euclidean world, and that world has properties described by Euclidean geometry. Our insights (especially the axioms and definitions) are drawn from eidetic observation of that Platonic world. This is the Platonic conception (or Platonism) of mathematics.
I personally am definitely inclined toward the Platonist view. I cannot elaborate on it here (see, for example, here and here and a bit in column 108), and will say only that the fact that a mathematical discovery is accepted and understood throughout the world shows that it is not a detached invention. The feeling is that the discoverer hit upon something that I too should have hit upon. That there is something natural and logical there, objective in some sense. Put differently, this is a process of discovery and not of invention. The fit of mathematics to what happens in the world and its suitability for use in physics also indicate that we are dealing with something connected to our experience.
If one adopts this conception, it is easy to see why mathematics is a branch of philosophy. Both mathematics and philosophy are products of observing ideas. In fact, mathematics is the formal and precise part of philosophy. These are insights of our eidetic vision that we can formulate precisely and derive conclusions from by formal means. Mathematics is nothing but formal philosophy.[6]
Methodological implications
We have seen that intuition is a cognitive tool. In closing, it is important to add that it should be used wisely and cautiously. On the one hand, this is a kind of observation that, although it is not amenable to direct empirical confirmation, still yields arguments built upon it that are quite useful and instructive, and therefore it is not correct to see it as something subjective. But on the other hand, it is very important to beware of excessive trust in it. Conceptual and logical analysis are important tools for clarifying and refining our intuitions, and they are necessary in order to separate the wheat from the chaff and to provide control over intuition (in place of the empirical control that exists in science).
Above I mentioned continental philosophy, which suffers from conceptual vagueness and wordplay and makes speculative and unfounded claims (if they have any meaning at all), and opposite it its Anglo-American counterpart, which is admirably rigorous but suffers from analytical emptiness. The balanced way to produce a reasonable and useful philosophy is to define the concepts properly, set alternatives against one another, identify implications, and then make arguments and arrive at conclusions. After conceptual analysis, one should not recoil from making claims, and of course also in the other direction: after extracting various insights from our intuition, one must subject them to conceptual analysis that clarifies their coherence and meaning. Only a combination of the two can give us a philosophy of value, one that on the one hand will not be empty (it will make claims) and on the other hand will also be cautious (not overly speculative).
In the coming columns I will continue this discussion.
[2] My working assumption is that it is nonsense until proven otherwise.
[3] Something similar can also be said about the study of Hasidism (see columns 104–105, and also the whole series that ends in in column 113) and about quite a few sources in Jewish thought.
[4] See my book God Plays Dice, chapter four.
[5] In the third part of the fourth notebook, I explained why there is no naturalistic fallacy here. A naturalistic fallacy is the inference of a normative conclusion from a physical fact. But an ethical fact yields a value, a norm, or a behavioral directive. If a physical fact is value-neutral, then an ethical fact is “charged” with a content that instructs me what it is proper or improper to do. The same is true of an aesthetic fact: it is charged with a judgmental content that instructs me what has aesthetic or artistic value and what does not.
[6] There are some, mainly among analytic philosophers, who argue that any philosophy that cannot be formalized in logical-mathematical terms says nothing. Despite my fondness for formalization, and despite its advantages (described above), I do not agree. Therefore I formulated it here by saying that there is a part of philosophy that can be formalized, and that is mathematics. Here it is worth noting that although formalization enables precise discussion, it is important to understand that it can also be very misleading. The move from the philosophical argument to its formal form (the formalization) usually hides nontrivial assumptions, and because they do not appear in the formalization itself, we get the feeling that the conclusion is necessary and impossible to dispute. That is true with respect to the formal argument, but with respect to the original philosophical problem that concerned us, not necessarily. On this point, it is worth seeing the brief discussion I conducted in column 108 about the topology of convex shapes.
Discussion
I think it is worth distinguishing here between two areas of discussion.
1. What philosophy deals with
2. What the source and validity of philosophical claims are
Regarding the latter question, you offer only two alternatives: a. a new kind of cognition (which you call intuition), b. a collection of meaningless nonsense.
But as I understand it, the question whether these two alternatives exhaust the space of possibilities depends on the answer to the first question – only if we assume that philosophy deals with statements about the world that cannot be confirmed empirically are we left with the range of possibilities you described: nonsense or a new kind of cognition. However, in order to answer the question of what philosophy’s domain is, you use one of the alternatives I mentioned above and claim that its domain is cognitions belonging to the new domain.
It seems to me that your move can be valid only if you ground your proposed definition of philosophy’s domain independently, and not on a claim justified only within the framework of that very move itself; otherwise this is circular justification.
What you wrote is certainly true regarding metaphysics. But regarding ethics and aesthetics, you are denying the philosophical status of everyone who does not attribute external objectivity to ethical or aesthetic values (and in doing so you are inventing a new definition for the word philosophy).
Ah, and one more thing: on your view ethics and aesthetics are basically branches of metaphysics (because they are real entities). And in fact, philosophy = metaphysics according to you (I assume epistemology as well, on your view, since it is a field of discussion at the interface between consciousness and metaphysics). All this makes sense, but it throws out all philosophy that does not accept this.
1. I completely agree (and I wrote this in my books as well). I’ll get to it later.
2. The eyes of the intellect are not as sharp and universally agreed upon as the eyes of flesh. Just as there is disagreement about distant sights, because vision there is blurrier.
I did not understand where you saw circularity here. Indeed, I argue that philosophy deals with claims about the world that are not accessible through the senses. The reason is that if it comes from the senses, then it is science. I reject the possibility that it deals only with clarification of concepts, simply because as a matter of fact not only that is associated with philosophy.
I have not assumed anything here that pertains to the second question.
I am not only denying their philosophical status but also the meaning of their claims. Someone who says these are non-objective claims is really speaking about subjective feelings, and thereby returns to claims from the domain of psychology (this is the result of observation, of myself or others: this is how we feel) or to mere conceptual definitions. As stated, neither of these is philosophy.
See above. Whoever does not accept this is engaged in psychology, not philosophy.
You wrote: everyone should understand that if he recognizes the validity of the laws of nature and of moral norms, he is in fact implicitly assuming the conception described here.
But there are significant alternatives. I’ll begin with Leibowitz. Leibowitz argued that scientific theory is imposed on the human mind; that is, why is something true? Because “I cannot think otherwise!” “A person cannot fail to know what he knows,” and many more such quotations, recordings of which I have. These things appear mainly in the discussions on philosophy of science with Yosef Agassi. And regarding ethics, Leibowitz argued for an identity between the concept of value and the concept of will; he did not speak about ideas, he spoke about the fact that human beings want what they want. With him this reached the point that people did not understand his answer to the question why he observes the commandments, and he always answered: “I decided to observe Torah and mitzvot,” or “About values one cannot argue, one can only fight.” That is, a person’s values are the things he wants. And by values he meant deep desire, not superficial desire (“I want ice cream”), as Asa Kasher analyzed.
Another alternative is Buddhism, which indeed constantly strives for pure intuition, nirvana, but its way to this is through constant doubt and release from human concepts. Ethics and metaphysics, and even physics, are from its perspective attainable only by reaching a supra-conceptual awareness.
What I want to say is that there is a variety of epistemologies, and to say that without your conception of intuition there is no place for laws of nature or for ethics seems to me a mistake.
“Moral values are what society defines as moral values” – it is customary to treat this sentence as a philosophical claim in the field of ethics (setting aside for the moment its philosophical value). It is certainly not a psychological claim.
There you have an empty conceptual definition.
Let me clarify further. For now you have only defined morality as a social determination. That is merely a definition. Now the question is whether it is binding. If not – then it has no meaning beyond a definition or a scientific description (psychological: this is how we feel). If it is binding – the question is why. Is there a principle that what society determines is binding? Where does it come from? What is the criticism of one who does not obey that principle? You will not escape a source in intuition; otherwise no obligation can arise.
And even if this sentence means to say that there is no other morality – then again it is discussing intuition and its contents, only claiming there is no such content. We have returned once again to my definition.
One must distinguish between things and the critique of things. Kantian ethics and aesthetics are forms of modern critique that divide between judgment of what is good and judgment of what is beautiful, and are connected to a Romantic conception of science as objective-rational and art as emotional-subjective. Before the modern period, not only was the division between emotion and reason unclear, but science served art (for example, the laws of rhetoric and the laws of harmony in classical music, or exact sciences and natural sciences in painting), and poetry was a source of inspiration for scientific research (for example Dante’s influence on Galileo).
Rabbi Yohanan said: “The simple greens we ate in our youth were finer than the peaches we ate in our old age.” Is that an aesthetic judgment? An ethical one? A metaphysical one? A philosophical one? Rational? Emotional? Subjective? Objective?
Whoever says that this is imposed on us simply does not accept the validity of scientific laws as claims about the world. We are back to a psychological description of ourselves. You will not escape the dichotomy: either a description of us (= psychology) or of reality (= intuition).
The same applies to ethics. If you decide just because you feel like it (call it deep desire or catharsis), this is not a philosophical claim but a psychological one. It is a description of something that exists within you. Only if you claim that it is valid, that is, something objective in some sense, do you arrive at ethics. For my part, by the way, I think people do not understand Leibowitz (including he himself not understanding himself. As a positivist he had a very limited and constricted conception), and what he means is that it is binding without a reason because of intuition (like sensory observation in science).
In general, the fact that someone wrote something proves nothing. It may be a mistake, and nothing can be learned from it. You have to ask what underlies his words and whether they have validity, and only then can one discuss them.
The Buddhist conception you brought simply repeats what I said.
Bottom line: there is not a variety of epistemologies (I referred to chapter 9 of Bergmann’s Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. Worth reading there), but a variety of formulations, some of which are mistaken and some of which say the same thing in different words. One may of course argue about the content of intuitive cognition, but not about its very existence. Whoever argues about its very existence, his claims are not dealing with philosophy.
Absolutely not true. This is not a distinction between subjective emotion and facts, but between two kinds of facts.
I did not understand what you were trying to prove from Rabbi Yohanan’s saying.
As for your distinction between things and their critique, I discussed this in my article in the Shabbat supplement of Makor Rishon (and I will get to that later):
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A7%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A7%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%99-%D7%95%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%94/
In any case, this is unrelated to the rest of what you wrote here.
You wrote: whoever says that this is imposed on us simply does not accept the validity of scientific laws as claims about the world.
And in fact that was Leibowitz’s claim; you can read or listen to the discussions on philosophy of science. He argued that this is the Bohr-Einstein dispute, in which Bohr voiced a Kantian position. “The function of science is not to say how nature is (Einstein’s position) but to say what we can say about nature,” thus he often quoted Bohr, and added, “and included in this is what we are compelled to say.” And if you ask Leibowitz about technology, throughout the discussions he makes clear that the problems of science are not parallel to the problems of using science.
What distinguishes aesthetics from emotion? When I am impressed and classify some perceptible thing (a picture, a sound, etc.) as “beautiful,” does that mean that it arouses in me a feeling of admiration? If so, then there is no room to distinguish aesthetics from other emotions, and just as there are things that arouse in me feelings of admiration or revulsion (ugly and beautiful), there are things that arouse feelings of fear, disappointment, etc.
Waiting eagerly for the post about the cat, because it seems to me there’s an answer there to everything you wrote here
In my opinion this is a misunderstanding. Leibowitz focused on what we can say about nature and not on nature as such (in Kantian terminology), but it is not true that this is a claim about us. Otherwise, once again, you have turned science into a branch of psychology. You will not be able to evade the alternatives I presented in the post itself to anyone who does not accept intuition as a cognitive tool: either you are making a claim about yourself (psychology), or about the world (science), or merely amusing yourself with thoughts. The whole argument here revolves around this point. Instead of citing so-and-so, say what, in your opinion, this division fails to exhaust—that is, what additional category I missed.
In aesthetics, the emotion is an indication of a claim about the world, not a merely subjective emotion. When you admire something, this is not an expression of your subjective feeling, but a claim about that thing (that it is worthy of admiration). This is a claim about the world, not about yourself. C. S. Lewis (the one from Narnia) explained this very well in his little book The Abolition of Man. It is very worth reading there (I mentioned it briefly in my book Truth and Unstable).
Is this a real distinction or an artificial one? With respect to other things as well one can say that something is frightening, meaning that it is worthy of being feared. What additional claim about the world is there in saying that something is worthy of admiration as opposed to other emotions?
I accept your position that perhaps I did not present Leibowitz’s position properly. And regarding the additional categories: in your article you include psychology and sociology within the sciences; Leibowitz emphasizes the great difference between the natural sciences and the humanities. Namely, that the claims of the natural sciences belong to the public domain of cognition, meaning that no one has a privilege over anyone else in understanding physics and chemistry. But in the humanities a person can know only his own consciousness. That is, any discipline that includes an assumption of conscious will—psychology, sociology, and even economics—is not included in scientific thought, because they include concepts of causation essentially different from causation in the natural sciences, in that a person can know only himself. Leibowitz says that the humanities are science in the sense that a person tries to think rational thought, and in that sense I agree with your interpretation of Leibowitz. Biology too differs from physics and chemistry because of the problem of teleology, but it is included in the natural sciences. Another category: with regard to cognition of the intellect, there are cognitions more certain than the senses themselves. A person’s awareness of his own consciousness, his will, his pain, etc., is more certain to him than what he senses. And of course there is the category included here between the reasoned and the unreasoned. And another, between what is compelled upon my consciousness (I cannot think otherwise) and what is not compelled. And among the things that are not compelled there is a distinction between those not compelled at all and those compelled upon me but not upon another. One may distinguish between what can be expressed and what cannot. In your definition of philosophy there is a change, because the ancients included natural science and the humanities within philosophy; Plato discusses what love is in the Phaedrus. That is, the distinction between the different categories is new. If you include aesthetics within philosophy, do you not thereby also include existentialism?
The distinction between the moral act and the aesthetic act, as well as the distinction between creators and researchers, stems from a narrow point of view
that generally suits secular modernity but not the periods that preceded it. Was there ever any great creator who did not have a critical standard for defining the quality of his craft, or whose creation was not meant to improve?
In other words, if the whole definition of the concept of beauty is only that “the perceptible is worthy of arousing a feeling of admiration,” and nothing more, then that is a category that also applies to every “perceptible worthy of arousing emotion x,” and to distinguish between the feeling of admiration and other emotions is just an arbitrary division.
According to this approach, many writings perceived as “philosophical” are not really philosophical writings at all (for example, Maimonides’ Eight Chapters).
The study of literature and poetry belongs categorically to the domains of science. It is observation of modes of human activity. Poetic creation itself is another category, and I dealt with it somewhat in my columns on poetry (107–113).
There are a few inaccuracies here (in biology and chemistry today there is no use of teleological explanations except as a rhetorical flourish. Precisely in physics they exist without anyone paying attention).
In any case, I do not see in these statements anything that contradicts my claim. As stated, there is no category here that was not mentioned in my remarks.
Who distinguished between this and that? I already explained the distinction.
Indeed correct. As for Eight Chapters, I assume there is a difference between different sections, but this is not the place. In the series on poetry (columns 107–113) I noted that in reality the pure concepts appear in impure form; see there carefully.
To claim that “reality is worthy of arousing a feeling of admiration” is no more a claim about reality than “reality is worthy of arousing a feeling of fear” (and subjectively they are certainly equal), so I cannot understand where the difference is. (Unless you have another definition of “beauty”; if so, what is it?)
Our master of perplexity, are you sure you are reading what I write?
I wrote that I agree, and that the distinction is not between art and fear but between an emotion that satisfies both conditions and one that does not.
But in the humanities there is no observation in the sense of the natural sciences. A person can observe only himself. I cannot observe what another person (the poet) feels or thinks.
In the humanities one does not observe a person’s feelings but the work of his hands: literary and poetic creations and the like. One classifies them and examines various characteristics. Hypotheses about tendencies and aims are generalizations on the basis of the facts, just like in the natural sciences. In the natural sciences too it is impossible to observe the general laws or causal relations. These are generalizations made on the basis of observational facts. There is no principled difference between the fields (there is of course a difference in precision and conceptualization and so on, but not in the fundamental logic).
On the contrary, psychology deals with feelings and emotions, and that belongs to the human/social sciences, not the humanities. True, there too one is fed by subjects’ reports (with various cross-checks), and therefore there too there is a way to speak empirically about processes in the psyche.
For conceptual precision, from Leibowitz’s perspective and from mine psychology is included in the humanities, and that is why I used the English term humanities. The difference is in the causal connection that you discover. In psychology you project will and consciousness onto the findings. But will and consciousness a person knows only about himself, and that is why he can be a solipsist, meaning that he can claim that he alone has consciousness and will. More than that, this is the reason the humanities have a non-decisive character: the opinions there are many and varied. In physics, however, this is not so, because when Newton’s theory ruled supreme, no one who understood it disagreed with it, and after Einstein likewise. In addition to that, in the humanities one cannot speak in quantitative categories but only in qualitative ones; quantitative categories are unique to the natural sciences. And what you said about questionnaires is decisive: how do we know that the report on the questionnaire is true? After all, many people lie, and at least I know about myself that my reporting on such questionnaires is not always accurate. How can the report be verified? An actor stages pain better than the real thing. In the natural sciences, by contrast, all claims belong to the public domain of cognition; that is, one need not assume anything about the findings in order to examine them.
Hello to the Rabbi,
It is hard for me to imagine a person who understands what you wrote here and disagrees with it.
I certainly agree with the basic idea of the “eyes of the intellect” or “eidetic seeing,” but it seems to me that there is another component similar to these tools by means of which we grasp objective reality.
You describe this feature as the ability to grasp objective things outside the human intellect, such as basic metaphysical or ethical principles, not by means of the senses.
There is a possibility of seeing some of these principles as the very structure of intellect as such, not specifically the human intellect or my personal intellect (if it is only my own mental structure, that is psychology).
Just as the structure of the sense of sight is defined— a certain wavelength produces in me a defined color sensation; that is the structure of sight—so too the human ability to know reality is by means of something we call intellect.
The whole essence of the intellect is the ability to grasp reality; this too has a defined structure, and its defined structure is part of the basic philosophical principles you describe.
Basic mathematics, or fundamental concepts like existence or causality, seem to me more like the structure of the intellect than a seeing of external principles.
(True, one must find what guarantees the correspondence between intellect and the objective world. Descartes’ answer is the existence of God.
It seems to me that this may perhaps be Maimonides’ meaning in “intellect, intellection, and intelligible” being one—that there must be a correspondence between intellect and intelligible through God’s intellect.)
Is this picture of the world (which is based on the eyes of the intellect) something disputed between rationalists and empiricists? If so, what is the world-picture of empiricists in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics?
Exactly this is my puzzlement… The first condition is emotion, and it is present in both, but what is the second condition?
The claim (about the world, in your view), “a reality worthy of arousing admiration,” is an empty definition, and it applies just as precisely to “a reality worthy of arousing fear.” What claim about the world is there in this more than in that?
The only way out is to give another definition of “beautiful” and not suffice with “a reality worthy of arousing admiration.”
Help me escape from the emotion that strikes terror into me..
Well, I do not agree with any of this, but I really do not understand how we got here. None of this has any connection whatsoever to what I wrote in the post.
In the natural sciences too we project from the bare facts to our conceptual world (causality, fields, forces, and the like). I do not see any principled difference whatsoever (apart from the issue of precise conceptualization and complexity). But as said, that is not the subject here.
The structure of intellect as such is a matter for scientific research. One observes the human mind and describes it. What you are describing is the Kantian picture of phenomena versus noumena. And if it is the structure of the intellect, then these are claims about us and not about the world, and in essence psychology, not philosophy and not natural science. That is regarding classification. I also disagree with this conception itself, since causality is not a claim about us but about the world, contra David Hume. I already mentioned that in my books I discussed this and even brought strong evidence against him, but this is not the place.
In my opinion, not entirely. The great crisis in the scientific-empiricist worldview brought about by Hume was because he understood that even empiricism requires intellectual categories and does not adhere only to bare facts. But because of this it was clear to him that these are claims about us and not about the world, and that is the empiricist approach. Rationalism holds that these are claims about the world, and it is of course correct. The dispute is not whether to make use of conceptions of intuition, but how to regard them: as something subjective (a claim about us) or objective (about the world).
Extreme empiricists who accept only sensory perceptions treat these three fields as delusions or as descriptive claims about us (branches of psychology).
The cat is not here yet, but its tail already is. It seems to me we are circling around the tail. I’ll try one last time.
My claim is that when I express an aesthetic position or artistic judgment about a work of art, I am not merely describing experiences taking place within me. If that were the case – there would be no point and no real value in it. I would merely be reporting to you on my mental state, whether that interests you or not. My claim is that judging a work of art is an attempt to determine its value in itself, also in relation to other people. The emotions aroused in me are a measure of that value, not its very definition (that is what I meant when I wrote that it is worthy of arousing admiration). I referred you to C. S. Lewis’s book The Abolition of Man, and if this interests you, read the first few dozen pages. It is truly illuminating.
By contrast, when I say that I love Yocheved, my words contain no claim that you too ought to love her. There is no disputing taste. Here I am only describing to you my own mental state and personal experience.
To conclude, indeed it is fitting that this feeling should strike terror into you, for there is here a lack of understanding on an objective plane (terror ought to awaken in everyone who does not understand what is being said to him 🙂 ). This is an objective emotion, like an artistic judgment. Note this well.
I thought I had understood you well, and then I examined carefully your joke at the end of your remarks (at your request), and once again I was led to think. I agree with your distinction that there are two situations: 1. purely subjective, like the fellow who loves Yocheved. 2. objective, which adds to that that “reality is beautiful,” that is, that reality is “worthy of admiration.”
Now my question is: is the second category unique solely to the feeling of admiration, and therefore should the category of aesthetics properly include only beauty and ugliness, that is, reality worthy / unworthy of the feeling of admiration? Or is there room within it also for additional emotions that are not purely subjective, for example a reality that ought to strike terror (like a failure to understand a text..), or any other emotion, and therefore aesthetics should be broadened beyond beauty and ugliness?
In short: is aesthetics = “reality that ought to arouse admiration,” or is aesthetics = “reality that ought to arouse emotion x” (as distinct from a situation in which a specific person feels that emotion)?
The Rabbi wrote that philosophy is parallel in the hierarchy to science. In fact, in my humble opinion, philosophy is the stage that precedes science. That is, science is mature philosophy. It is the stage that prepares the ground for scientific research. Science too (the natural sciences) began as natural philosophy (and that is what all scientists were called until the 19th century). Thus every philosophical field that matures will become a science (probably a human science, as opposed to science in the plain sense). Philosophy is apparently the stage of clarifying the a priori assumptions before examining the terrain of reality. That is, a person’s looking within himself before looking outside himself. One of the clearest examples of what I am speaking about is cosmology, which for thousands of years was a philosophical field and today is thoroughly kosher physics. And there are several other famous examples (including mechanics itself before Galileo understood that experiments had to be performed).
In fact, philosophy is the adolescent stage of a preceding reality, namely mythology, which in turn is the childhood stage of the way we describe the world around us. And if so, we again have three stages of development in the cognition of reality that parallel childhood, youth, and maturity: mythology, philosophy, science.
It is true that if these are only properties of our intellect, that is psychology,
but if logic and mathematics, for example, are essential properties of every intellect insofar as it is intellect, then the world that exists—and it is clear to us that what sustains it is intellectual (God cannot create something containing a contradiction, not out of lack of ability but by virtue of His being intellectual)—
that too is a possibility for knowledge of objective reality.
Is this not a parallel possibility to the eyes of the intellect that you describe?
As I wrote, aesthetics deals with what is worthy of admiration. But there are other emotions, non-aesthetic ones, that also have similar characteristics (satisfy the two requirements). When a tiger appears before you, it is fitting to fear. That is not an aesthetic claim, but it is objective in the sense defined here.
By the way, if the joke at the end is what made the penny drop, then there you have it again: it is worthwhile seriously engaging with esoteric matters. Sometimes the content is no more important than the methodology.
Your general remark (about philosophy preceding science) was made above, and I already wrote that I accept it and will address it later.
But there are quite a few assertions here with which I do not agree. Philosophy is not merely introspection, otherwise it would be a branch of psychology. Ancient science such as cosmology was also not psychology but primitive science, when people thought that what one sees in reality without analysis is reality itself, and therefore they did not attach so much importance to experiment.
I also do not agree that every philosophical field that matures will become a science. There may be such fields, but I see no necessity that this must always be the case.
This is not a parallel possibility, but a somewhat different formulation (and in my opinion not entirely precise) of that very same possibility. You are basically saying that reality can be known without sensory observation—exactly what I argued in the post. So leave aside all kinds of vague concepts like intellect as such and the like. They add nothing to the discussion.
Are there ideas that we ordinarily cannot perceive with the eyes of the intellect, and are therefore outside the scope of philosophy?
For example, I thought about the idea of tefillin (“The Holy One, blessed be He, puts on tefillin” – implying that tefillin have meaning in the world of ideas). We received by tradition that there is such a thing, but only a few are capable of arriving at a vision of it “with the eyes of the intellect”?
If so, do you think this is a matter of training (practice) until the eyes of the intellect see it, or does it come as a gift from above (I ask because with “philosophical” ideas, after a certain amount of training one can “see” an idea that initially one did not see)?
I have no idea.
By looking within yourself I mean contemplating our cognition. Psychology deals with the soul and not with the mind (that is, it does not deal with consciousness; I am speaking about epistemology). That is, it deals with the animal drives of our activity and not with our contemplation of the world.
What the Rabbi calls “primitive science” (not attaching importance to experiment) is exactly what I called “clarifying the a priori assumptions before examining the terrain of reality,” and the experiment is exactly the stage at which philosophy becomes science.
Regarding every philosophical field becoming a science, indeed that is not necessary. I did in fact generalize from experience up to now, and also from what my intuition tells me is true. But the future will decide.
With God’s help, 27 Tammuz 5778
For in the Gemara, Berakhot 6a, the matter of the “tefillin of the Master of the universe” is explained: that the Holy One, blessed be He, glorifies Himself in the praise of Israel, as explained by the verses written in the “tefillin of the Master of the universe,” all of which speak of the praise and uniqueness of Israel, such as “And who is like Your people Israel, one nation on earth,” “And what great nation is there that has a god so near to it,” and the like.
Just as tefillin are a person’s glory, such that the name of the Lord is called upon him – so the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, is His people Israel, in whose uniqueness, unity, and cleaving to its God and His ways, the name of Heaven is sanctified in the world!
With blessing, S. Z. Levinger
To Rabbi Michi, at the very least would you agree that the Torah is such an idea (“He looked into the Torah and created the world”)?
Otherwise you have turned the study of philosophy into the study of Torah in the sense of the object itself.
I do not understand why. Philosophy is Torah in the sense of the person. Torah in the sense of the object is the study of the Torah that was given to us at Sinai and the Oral Torah that accompanies it.
I accept what you wrote about intuition, and the explanation is novel to me and appeals to me.
But it seems to me that regarding the natural sciences there is no need for intuition in order to give them validity; rather, their validity derives from the fact that they work! Admittedly this is limited and not final validity, but in my opinion no more than this is needed. Unlike metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics – there, as you say, there is no validity at all other than intuition.
I disagree. The question is not whether the validity is limited or not, but whether there is any validity at all. Science does not only predict facts; it also makes claims about the world (for example, that there is a force of gravity or an electromagnetic field). The validity of science is something beyond the question whether it works. The question is whether the content of its claims about the world is indeed true or not.
By the way, ethics and aesthetics also work in that sense, in that even someone who is not a philosopher and has not dealt with their assumptions can know how to conduct himself morally and aesthetically. Working does not mean valid.
So here we disagree.
I think that objects such as a magnetic field are created by science solely in order to help us model the physical world for ourselves and help us predict facts. If someone comes along and proposes a theory without fields that is equivalent (in terms of its predictions), simple to understand, and convenient to work with, it could be accepted without giving up anything and without any declaration of a scientific revolution, even though the field would seemingly disappear.
In short, in my humble opinion there is no content to science that has no practical consequence in the material world. The additional content you speak of (“there is a force of gravity,” “light is both particle and wave in one utterance,” etc.) is not part of science.
In ethics and aesthetics it seems to me there is no similar meaning at all to the concept of “works,” and therefore one must find validity (weaker) for their claims.
With God’s help, 28 Tammuz 5778
The fact that the Torah was the blueprint for whose realization the world was created (as stated: “He looked into the Torah and created the world”) brings about a situation in which instinctive desires were imprinted in the human soul, spurring him toward what is good and obligatory according to reason.
Just as sensations of hunger and thirst are implanted in a person in order to spur him to eat and drink and provide his body with the materials it needs for its construction and functioning – so too sensations of love are implanted in a person, leading him to establish a family and invest in it; feelings of friendship spur him to live a life of society, community, and nationhood; curiosity spurs him to learn and increase knowledge; a sense of justice spurs him to do good; a sense of shame brings a natural revulsion toward bad deeds; a sense of beauty toward what is fitting and orderly, and parallel to it a sense of revulsion toward disorder, filth, and dirt, which may lead to confusion and illness.
Obviously one cannot rely blindly on natural feelings, for there is the possibility of instinctive bias, just as a person may crave food and drink that are unhealthy. Moreover, even with feelings that are basically correct, there must be balance between the two poles. Thus, for example, it is good that a person love with all his heart his family and friends, his people and his land, but his love of justice and uprightness must be just as strong so that his love for those close to him not lead him to “bend the line of judgment.”
For this one needs careful and deep contemplation, and the Torah as the “order of the world” helps a person find the proper balance that will give all his fundamentally proper but still raw desires and feelings the right place and measure, in which they complete one another in perfect balance.
With blessing, S. Z. Levinger
Your approach is accepted by quite a few philosophers of science, but in my eyes it is absurd (that is what I meant when I said I assume scientific claims are not about us but about the world). Beyond that, there is no doubt that an overwhelming majority of scientists do not think this way. Take, for example, the law of gravitation and the force of gravity. The law of gravitation only describes the attraction of masses to one another, and apparently that should suffice. But philosophically it does not seem plausible to scientists that there is action at a distance (that a distant mass acts on another mass far away from it), and therefore they “invented” the force of gravity, which is a kind of entity that mediates between the masses and explains why the action is not performed at a distance.
According to you, this is only a manner of speaking and not a claim about the world. But it is worth noting that the world is investing billions of dollars in order to discover gravitons, which are the particles that carry the force of gravity. But if there is no such force and this is only a convenient way of speaking for us, why invest so much money in testing a fictional hypothesis? That is unreasonable, and it is clear that the scientific community assumes that gravitons indeed exist, even though this is only a theoretical entity. This is of course only one example among many (I chose it because in fact, for now, it is still not technologically possible to discover gravitons).
There is more evidence against this absurd conception, and I discussed this, among other places, here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%93-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%95-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9D/
You state that if I think science deals only with the prediction of facts, then I think that the claims of science are about us and not about the world.
I do not accept that statement. In my opinion science certainly does make claims about the world.
Intuition is necessary for the scientist in order to formulate scientific theories, but it is not what gives them their validity.
Just to note for the Rabbi that they did not “invent” the force of gravity because of problems of action at a distance. The existence of the force is part of the law of gravitation. The law says that between every two masses in the world they strike one another, meaning that there is an attractive force between them. That is, the law is that such a force exists. And indeed historically, as far as I know, Kepler was already the first to conceive of this force even before Newton (just with an inverse linear dependence on distance). What the Rabbi is talking about is that already in Newton’s eyes a force acting at a distance was not something physically intelligible to him because of a philosophical assumption (of nature) that a cause is supposed to bring about its effect in the same place in space and at the same time, of course), and therefore since then they searched for a field theory of gravitation that would play a role similar to that played by the electromagnetic field and Maxwell’s equations, which replaced Coulomb’s law and the old electrostatic force. And that was Einstein’s field of space-time curvature. And gravitons are the result of attempts (still incomplete to this day) to quantize it. What the Rabbi is speaking about, that they are searching for and investing billions in, is not gravitons but gravitational waves.
Eilon, gravitational waves have already been found. They are looking for gravitons.
Where did you draw these remarks of mine from? I have no idea. In any case, I did not write any such thing. What I wrote was that if in your opinion science is only a collection of (known) facts, then scientific theory is a statement about us and not about the world. Predicting facts (that we have not observed) requires a theory, and if it works and predicts, then that means the theory is true in the world itself and not only as a claim about us. The question is where do you draw the theory from that predicts these facts for you? Why not generalize the observed facts in infinitely many other ways (which would yield different predictions)? Only from intuition (for example, that what is simpler is truer – Ockham’s razor). QED.
Eilon, the existence of the force of gravity is a result of rejecting action at a distance. Otherwise they would say there is a law of gravitation whereby two masses attract one another, without assuming there is a force that causes this.
Both the discovery of gravitational waves and of gravitons require enormous financial investment, and the assumption that it is worth investing is based on the fact that everyone assumes the force of gravity is an existing entity and not merely a fiction that, from our perspective, describes the law of gravitation.
Since the money being invested, too, may very well not be an “existing entity” – they do not mind investing it in the search for the imaginary force of gravity.
However, the fact that we are not floating and drifting in space does give some indication that the force of gravity exists in reality and is not mere imagination 🙂
With wishes for life and peace, the cat that is not there
I did not understand why science needs intuition.
I am deliberately using a crude example for the sake of the discussion.
The scientific determination that a head smashed into a wall will be injured, including the scientific-physical name given to the phenomenon, does not require any intuition. A few trials and the formula is clear.
One can of course ask who says there are laws, and perhaps tomorrow the head will actually get a massage in a violent encounter with a concrete wall, but as is known, whoever tries that again will get hit hard on the head.
I see that you addressed this question at length here and in the article to which you referred. Although I am not sure I accept the distinction between an objective claim and information, I understand what you are arguing, and I am not sure I can add to the discussion beyond the general remark that in my view I am not sure there is anything here beyond semantics, since the informationalists too take upon themselves the yoke of empiricism, and I have no special objection to a mystical definition of a physical phenomenon, so long as it does not lead the one making the definition to ignore reality or invent things about it.
Perhaps I did not understand you earlier. I agree that in order to make claims about the world one needs to appeal to an additional principle of thought beyond pure logic or observation. You claim that this principle is intuition. What I want to argue is that one can disagree about what this additional argument is. Perhaps you will say this is a semantic dispute, but I do not agree: what are its boundaries, what information does it give, and how can one use this additional tool? That is why I brought the example of Buddhism. They do indeed recognize intuition, but in order to use it properly so as to attain the world truly, a person must undergo a certain process, and so long as he has not undergone it, most of his attainments, even though they stem from intuition, are false—for example, the existence of the self.
I do not understand what the claim is. Call this additional faculty catharsis if you like. My claim still is that investigation by means of this faculty is the essence of philosophy. I said nothing about the way to get to it or about its nature, and therefore I do not understand what Buddhism is doing here or why there is any need for it here. Beyond that, if you want to continue a discussion, please do so with shorter intervals of time. I no longer remember anything (there are many exchanges here on different subjects).
And what are we to do in a situation where there is disagreement, where each person sees with the eyes of his intellect, or feels in his intuition, different things regarding ethics, for example? How can we decide, and what does that mean? One of them is mistaken and the other right—and why?
First, we will not always be able to decide. So what? Why do you think there must always be a way to decide? We plainly see that philosophical and ethical disputes are not always decided, and in many cases the dispute remains. My claim is that the fact that there is a dispute does not mean there is no truth here (that one is right and the other wrong).
Second, there are ways to decide. Those ways are called rhetoric (as distinct from logic). Rhetoric is an ability somewhere between literature and logic, and its role is to take the listener and examine things from another angle, so that suddenly he can see (with the eyes of his intellect) the idea under discussion and understand that I am right (or that I will see that he is right).
Again I apologize for the gaps between one response and the next; you asked me to continue the question here.
In honor of Rabbi Michael Abraham,
First, an apology. You asked that I not ask questions at long intervals, but it takes me time to ponder things and find sources.
The discussion below is not about what is correct, but about Leibowitz’s opinion:
You argued that basically Leibowitz agreed with the intuition approach but as a positivist could not see this. That is, when Leibowitz claimed that something is a value, in your view he meant that in intuition he saw this as the good. I found a quotation, and I heard him say it in a recording: “Values do not exist in themselves; values are things that a person sees as values, and this seeing is an expression of man’s conative faculty. It is something he wants, or wants to be.” And Agassi adds: “not in the sense of appetite.”
In my opinion there is here a contradiction to your position, and Leibowitz saw values only as what a person wants. According to your claim, Leibowitz removed ethics from philosophy.
Absolutely not true. This sentence says exactly what I put in his mouth. He is excluding appetite, which is just urge or instinct, from judgment (whereas according to your view it is exactly the same thing). But as a positivist he does not know how to identify this thing, and therefore treats it as arbitrary (“a person sees them as values”). What he means is that this is not a reasoned principle and not sensory-scientific observation, but intuitive observation (in my language). That is, it is a basic thing that has no observational justification (and from the positivist’s point of view there is no other kind of justification). A value is a basic principle, and in his language: that’s just how it is. This is exactly what I wrote regarding his words.
But I really do not see the point of discussing Leibowitz’s thought. Why is that interesting? If you want to discuss the matters themselves, then it is worth making claims on the merits.
1. You begin by saying that our objective knowledge (all knowledge) cannot be based only on the senses, and that we necessarily also use the eyes of the intellect / intuition to ground pieces of knowledge such as induction, and this implies that the eyes of the intellect are on the same scale as the senses.
Would it not be more correct to say that the eyes of the intellect are also above the senses? After all, sense data by themselves (as Russell shows in The Problems of Philosophy) are nothing; our recognition that sense data express an existing reality is itself based on the eyes of the intellect / intuition / categories of thought.
It follows, then, that the eyes of the intellect not only organize sense data, but actually give them validity as indeed reflecting an existing reality, no? (I don’t mind what you call this grounding, but it cannot rest on the senses, which give us only images, sounds, etc.).
2. There is a difference between the boundaries of metaphysics on the one hand and morality and aesthetics on the other. Whereas the ideas of metaphysics are more or less solid and accepted by all, in morality the boundaries of what counts as a moral act are far more fluid, and in aesthetics the boundaries are broader still.